The ROS Developers Podcast 2019 Yearly Review

09/01/2020

This is the first podcast episode of the year 2020. Also, we are celebrating that we have been here with you for 2 years. Yes, we are entering into the 3rd season of the podcast.

That is why today, I would like to dedicate the episode to all the listeners of this podcast. It is thanks to you that are listening, that we can keep doing this podcast. Thanks to your support, to your comments, to your shares in the social networks, that our podcast has a reason of being.

I really enjoy when I attend different events around the world and meet people that tell me they are followers of the podcast. I’m very happy to hear that the podcast is useful for you, because that is the main aim of this podcast: to be entertaining and useful

Today we are going to do a review the whole 2019 year in terms of the podcast. Which episodes were the most listened ones? Which platform is the most used to listen? What can we say about the audience? Those are the questions that we are going to answer along this episode.

But before going into that, let me remind you about our ROS online academy. Yes, at the Construct we have created an online academy named The Robot Ignite Academy which contains a ROS learning path for beginners. We start by teaching you Linux and Python for robotics, and we continue teaching you all the basic ROS concepts required to become a master of ROS. We conclude with a course that teaches you how to build your own robot and how to ROSify it, add ROS control to it so you can finally become a ROS Developer.

Apart from that, let me tell you that we have prepared a live course in Barcelona to teach how to program robot manipulators. In collaboration with Robotnik company, we are going to deliver a one-week live course in Barcelona to teach how to make a mobile manipulator equipped with cameras, arm and wheels move in a warehouse and do the typical pick and fill in the box task. We are going to practice with real robot RB-Kairos from Robotnik and learn how to create a complete application including the web interface to easily control the robot by non-experts. Check it out at masteringros.com

Podcast published in the following platforms

We publish the podcast in two main platforms: iTunes, for the listeners that use MacOs devices like the iPhone or iPad, and Stitcher, for the listeners in other platforms like Android. You can get the links to those on the show notes.

However, during during 2019 we decided to publish the podcast also in two other platforms:
* We started to publish the podcast in our Youtube channel.
* In May of 2019, Spotify launched its podcast service, and we started to publish the podcast there

Audience

We have an average of 1.022 listeners per episode at the end of 2019. That is more than double what we had in 2018. In 2018 we had an average of 473 listeners per episode. Our goal for 2020 is to 10x the number of listeners per episode.

In Youtube, we usually have around 170 visualisations more per podcast. However some specific episodes have had peaks of 350 visualisations.

Spotify just provides a few more visualisations (around 40 more), but we can see a clear tendency into growing. Spotify has incorporated in May of 2019 their service of podcasts.

The top 5 episodes more listened during 2019

1. How to start learning ROS, on episode 43
2. Using Nvidia Jetson with ROS, on episode 57
3. The ROS SLAM toolbox, on episode 56
4. Using the Anki Vector robot with ROS, on episode 39
5. How ROS is developed, on episode 42

Audience’s countries

1. United States (19%)
2. India (9.16%)
3. Germany (7.59%)
4. South Korea (3.83%)
5. Japan (3.8%)
6. Spain (3.67%)
7. UK (3.29%)
8. China (3%)

Feedback received

We accept compliments as well as criticisms. For example, we got a lot of complains about the sound of some of the episodes. This is now first priority for me to improve. Also got complains about the frequency of publication. It should be weekly but sometimes it took longer. I’m working on that on delivering an episode every week on Mondays.
Those two are the main goals to improve the quality of the podcast for this year. We will push hard to accomplish, but do not hesitate to let us know when we are failing on those..

We are not receiving any complain about the deepness of the subjects. Are we doing it ok? Would you like us to deal more technically with the subjects, or you would even like to go less into technical details and go more about the story and anecdote around the ROS development of the week?

Then before finishing, I would like to remind you that our goal is to achieve the 10x increase in number of listeners.
How can we achieve that? Only with your help. If you like the podcast please help us reach that goal. How can you do it?
– Recommend to your colleagues
– Give us 5 stars on iTunes or Stitcher

At present we only have one feedback in Stitcher from Pito Salas which says:

If you do ROS, you need to listen to this podcast!

I’ve listened to most of the episodes so far and I feel that they are excellent if you are technical and want to know as much as possible about ROS. I really like the interviewer’s style!

We have no feedback on iTunes.
We need your feedback about the podcast! Please give us a review. We accept criticisms. I’m not afraid of the critics, since I strongly believe that they are the source for improvement.
I need to clarify also that we love your support messages like the one of Pito since they allow us to see that we are doing something which is useful for you.

How can you suggest us a subject or person to interview for the podcast? Send me an email at rtellez@theconstructsim.com
You can even propose yourself for the interview. Remember that the goal of the podcast is to provide useful content to the ROS Developers out there. They need to learn about the latests technologies on ROS, which ones they should apply to their projects, how can they make best usage. If you think that your development is going to help the ROS developers out there, you can propose yourself.

That is all for today. Please leave us a review in iTunes telling us what you think about the podcast and what you would like to have. Thank you very much for your 5 stars in iTunes!!
See you next week with a new lesson from the experts. Until then, keep pushing your ROS learning!